Every Sunday, I get to volunteer at Cherry Hills Community Church in Colorado. If you're ever in the Denver area and appreciate insanely good music, messages that actually connect to Scripture, and a healthy dose of humor (because what's the point of doing life together if we can't laugh at it?), come visit.
I usually work with the three- and four-year-olds, and we've got a good thing going. They understand the routine. We read books, build towers, and occasionally have deep theological conversations about why God made dinosaurs. I feel pretty qualified for the job.
Last Sunday, however, we were short on volunteers in the 18- to 24-month-old room. I figured, how hard could it be? I've raised two daughters, helped build companies, managed executives, and navigated enough organizational change to qualify for some kind of emotional frequent-flyer program. What's another twelve months of age difference?
Well. Apparently, everything.
Within ten minutes, we had twenty toddlers, three teachers, and what I can only describe as a hostile takeover by people who can't reliably put on their own shoes.
Dean showed up dressed to the nines. Toddler chic. This kid looked like he had brunch reservations at 11 and a board meeting at noon. Dean wanted books, and frankly, Dean seemed like the only person in the room with a strategic plan.
Bella wanted bubbles, then more bubbles, then different bubbles, then the blocks, then whatever Dean had, then bubbles again. Bella was basically our Chief Innovation Officer, running a six-second product development cycle.
And then there was sweet Esme. Esme wanted absolutely nothing to do with our establishment. She stood by the door waiting for her parents to come back, and she protested every attempt to convince her this was a perfectly lovely place to spend an hour. I respected her commitment to her position.
Then somebody started crying, which made somebody else cry, which led three more children to conclude they hadn't been told anything about the building's safety. Within seconds, we had a full-blown emotional merger, complete with screaming, questionable leadership, and no exit strategy.
Right there, somewhere between the bubble machine and a toddler trying to eat a board book, it hit me. I've been in this meeting. The only difference is that everybody was wearing business casual and the bubbles cost $299 a month per user.
Welcome to the AI Daycare
I love technology and I love innovation. At ReflectionPoint Advisors, we're fortunate to have some seriously talented technology minds helping us build tools that make career transitions smarter and faster.
Here's how it usually goes. We introduce an amazing new AI tool, everyone gets excited, we train the team, we build it into our process, and we get it working beautifully. Approximately seventeen minutes later, someone on our tech team discovers another platform that's faster, cheaper, and capable of making the first one look like a fax machine. Suddenly Bella wants new bubbles, Dean is still trying to finish his book, and Esme is at the door wondering if she can get her old job back.
If that sounds familiar, you're in good company. McKinsey's 2025 State of AI survey found that 88% of organizations now use AI regularly in at least one business function. That sounds like progress until you read the next line: nearly two-thirds haven't started scaling AI across the company, and only 39% report any effect on earnings at the enterprise level.
It gets more interesting. S&P Global Market Intelligence found that 42% of companies had abandoned most of their AI initiatives, up from 17% the year before, and the average organization scrapped 46% of its AI proofs of concept before they ever reached production. Forty-two percent! That's a lot of abandoned toys on the floor.
My suspicion is that some of those tools deserved to be abandoned and some didn't. The trick is knowing the difference before you put your team through another round of organizational whiplash. We're getting remarkably good at starting things. I'm less convinced we're getting as good at finishing them.
Five Questions to Ask Before You Buy More Bubbles
1. Is This Actually Better, or Is Bella Just Bored?
Gary Vaynerchuk talks about macro patience and micro speed: have a long-term vision, and move quickly on what gets you there. I love that philosophy. I also suspect Gary would agree that moving quickly in seventeen directions at once doesn't get you anywhere.
Before switching tools, ask what the new one actually improves. Is it faster, more accurate, less expensive, or easier for clients, and can we prove any of that? At RPA, I'm all ears when someone shows me technology that helps our clients make better career decisions or gives our advisors more time for the work that really matters. If the main selling point is a prettier dashboard and a really cool animated assistant named Kevin, I have questions.
The gut check: Would we still want this tool if nobody had called it revolutionary?
2. Does It Support Our Why, or Are We Just Collecting Subscriptions?
Simon Sinek built a career on one question in Start With Why, and it's deceptively simple: why? It's an inconvenient question when you're trying to justify your twelfth AI subscription, and it's exactly the right one. Every organization should be able to explain why a change matters to the people it serves.
At ReflectionPoint Advisors, our purpose is helping people find clarity about what's next in their careers. Technology is a big part of how we deliver on that, but our clients aren't paying us to collect impressive software. They want direction, confidence, useful intelligence, and results. Before we bring in the next shiny thing, I want to know exactly how it helps us deliver those better, and what we're retiring to make room for it. Adding a tool without removing one is how you end up with thirty browser tabs, fourteen subscriptions, and an employee who needs an archaeological expedition to find the right login.
The gut check: Can we explain the value in one sentence a client would actually care about?
3. Have We Checked on Esme?
This one matters more than most leaders realize. Mel Robbins' The Let Them Theory points out that we can't control other people's reactions. Some people will love a change, some will question it, and some will stand by the door waiting for their parents. Let them have their feelings, and then focus on what you can do. For leaders, that means explaining the purpose, listening to concerns, providing training, and making sure people get a fair shot at succeeding.
An employee who refuses to learn is very different from one who's exhausted because you've changed the process six times since Easter. I've also learned that the person asking "Why are we doing this again?" might be asking the smartest question in the room. Our enthusiastic innovators tend to see the possibilities, our skeptics tend to see the consequences, and a good decision needs both.
The gut check: If the least enthusiastic person on our team had to use this tomorrow, would they have the tools, training, and confidence to succeed?
And for heaven's sake, don't announce another platform migration on a Friday afternoon. That's how Esme ends up on LinkedIn with the green Open to Work banner.
4. Did the Old Tool Actually Fail, or Did We Just Forget About It?
This might be the biggest trap of all. Remember the wonderful platform we bought four months ago? The one we spent weeks evaluating and announced in an all-team email with approximately eleven exclamation points? Whatever happened to that thing? Did it stop working, did we find something better, or did someone watch a compelling demo over lunch and decide we needed a complete technological makeover?
Before making a switch, I want us to answer three things. What did we expect the original tool to accomplish? Did we give it enough time, training, and actual use to succeed? And can the replacement show a meaningful edge once we count the cost of switching? That last part matters. The new subscription might be cheaper, but someone has to pay for the hours spent retraining everyone, rebuilding integrations, moving data, and apologizing to the person who just finished writing the instructions. Starting over has a real cost.
McKinsey's research found that the organizations seeing the strongest AI results were nearly three times as likely as others to have fundamentally redesigned their workflows. The value comes from changing how the work gets done and then giving that change a chance to work.
The gut check: Are we abandoning something that failed, or something we never gave a fair chance?
Sometimes the best innovation is finishing what we started. Dean understands this. Dean just wants to finish his book.
5. Can We Laugh While We Figure It Out?
This is where I think leadership gets unnecessarily complicated. We're all trying to keep up with technology that's advancing at a ridiculous pace, building new processes, learning new vocabulary, and pretending we understood that last AI demo without Googling six things afterward. Of course it's messy. We're human beings working through something none of us has done before, and if we can't find the humor in that, it's going to be an awfully long decade.
At one point in the nursery, I looked around at the crying toddlers, the bubbles, the books, and the total collapse of our carefully planned activities, and I started laughing. What else could I do? Nobody was hurt, and nobody was in danger. We were simply having a spectacularly unsuccessful morning executing our original strategy. I've been to board meetings that went worse.
Leaders need to give their teams permission to have those moments: to try something, admit it didn't work, laugh about it, and then figure out what's next. A little humility goes a long way when you're asking people to learn something new.
The gut check: Can we admit an idea didn't work without turning it into a three-hour meeting about accountability?
Sometimes you just need to clean up the Goldfish crackers and move on.
Maybe We All Need to Grow Up a Little
What struck me most about my Sunday morning adventure is that my usual three- and four-year-olds aren't any less curious than the toddlers. They still want to explore everything, they still get excited about new things, and they still have spectacular moments of irrationality, usually involving whose turn it is with the purple crayon. They've just had a little more practice staying with something, working through the frustration, and finding out what happens after the first rush of excitement wears off.
That's the muscle I think organizations need to build right now. We should absolutely be experimenting with AI. The opportunity is extraordinary, and I have no interest in being the company that missed the next big thing because we got too comfortable with the last one. The wisdom is in knowing when to experiment, when to commit, and when to walk away.
That lesson reaches well beyond technology. Maybe you're thinking about changing jobs, starting a business, buying a franchise, going back to school, or walking away from a career you've spent twenty years building. Something shinier will always be waiting across the room, there will always be a reason to stay put, and someone will always be happy to tell you which one to pick. The work is asking enough of the right questions to know which move makes sense for you.
That's exactly why we built ReflectionPoint Advisors: to help people explore their options, understand what's possible, and decide what comes next with clear eyes. Sometimes the smartest move is a big leap, and sometimes it's finishing the book you're already reading. Either way, it helps to talk it through with someone who can see the whole room. If you're weighing your own next move, I'd love for you to join us for a complimentary, no-pitch Clarity Call.
As for me, I'll be back at church next Sunday with a whole new appreciation for early childhood educators, change management professionals, and anyone who has made it through an enterprise software migration without crying. I'm also bringing more bubbles. Bella was right about one thing. They do make people smile.
Clarity for What's Next.
Terri Crayton Wiksten
Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer | ReflectionPoint Advisors
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